My first stop in New Zealand was the city of Auckland where I flew into from Australia. Several people had warned me over the previous few weeks that I shouldn't expect much from Auckland and that I should get out of there as soon as I can. Considering that a quarter of the population of New Zealand live there, it is a bit of a nothing city really, especially in comparison to some of the great cities around the world that I've been to in the last few months. However, once you get out of the centre of the city, there [View Full Entry]

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I took a flight from Alice Springs to Cairns on a ridiculously empty plane - it had about 20 people on it. I think there were almost as many staff on the plane as passengers. Also on the same flight was another English guy called Paul who I'd met at the hostel in Alice Springs, so I had a travel buddy for a few days whilst I was in Cairns. For some reason, Cairns seemed to be a bit of a cheaper city to stay in than some of the others I've been to in Australia and this was helped by [View Full Entry]

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From Melbourne I travelled overnight to Adelaide where I had a one night stop over before heading into the outback. I'd managed to book a very cheap flight from Adelaide to Alice Springs a few weeks earlier - only 48 Aus dollars. It was noticeably hotter in Adelaide than in either Sydney or Melbourne and then the heat in Alice Springs was just another level, it was like standing in an oven. From Alice Springs I'd booked myself on a 3 day trip which would visit a few different places in the centre of outback including Uluru (aka Ayer's rock), Kata [View Full Entry]

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I landed in Sydney after a 9 hour flight from Hong Kong and so that marked the end of my time in Asia and the start of Australasia (or Oceania if you want to call it that). Even as I checked in to my hostel at 8am, I could tell it was going to be a hot day which seemed like being back to normal after the brief few days of cold in Hong Kong. The main thing which I had to adjust to at first when arriving in Australia was the prices of everything. I've been so used to ridiculous [View Full Entry]

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To get from Cambodia to Hong Kong I had to catch a flight from Cambodia to Kuala Lumpur, then take a bus from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore before finally flying out of Singapore to Hong Kong. So, in the space of about 24hours I'd been through 4 countries - it was a tiring day! The first thing I noticed after arriving in Hong Kong was that it was much colder than what I'd been used to the last few months. I expected it to be a little bit cooler but not by that much and it gave me a bit of [View Full Entry]

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I'm roughly halfway through the 5 months which I'm planning on travelling for and I've had a great time the last 2 and a half months - I just hope the next few months are equally as good! We've just got back from a week in Cambodia and somehow it has set the bar even higher as it was one of the best weeks I've had so far. We entered Cambodia at a place called Siem Reap which is in the north of the country. The main reason for visiting Siem Reap is because it's where the 800/900 year old huge [View Full Entry]

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After completing our scuba diving open water courses on Tioman Island, we headed north to another island off the east coast of Malaysia called Perhentian Island. Perhentian is actually two separate islands and we stayed on the smaller of the two at an area called Long Beach (which as the name suggests is next to a long beach). We'd heard mixed reports before getting to Perhentian as to whether or not the island was actually open or not because usually, at some point between the end of October and mid-November, pretty much everything on the whole of the two islands will [View Full Entry]

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After spending a few days in Singapore we crossed the border into Malaysia. The first stop was Melaka which is an old historical town in the south of the country. We only spent two nights there as a stop over on the way to Kuala Lumpur but it was fun to spend a day walking around the town. We found a really good guesthouse to stay in which was extremely basic (outside shower & toilet, simple dorm room) but it was in a cool old building and had a great atmosphere to it (plus it only cost 2 pounds a night). [View Full Entry]

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After 4 weeks in Vietnam (and a few days in Laos), we were back in the air and on our way to Singapore. We only spent 4 nights there before going into neighbouring Malaysia. The first thing that strikes you about Singapore is just how clean and modern it is - the airport is said to be the best in the world as Id already discovered when I stayed the night in the transit terminal when flying from Japan to Vietnam. However, I guess the cleanliness of the city comes at a cost because there seems to be several over-strict laws [View Full Entry]

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After arriving back in Vietnam after our short trip into Laos, we learnt that we had a lucky escape from typhoon Ketsana as it hit the centre of Vietnam just after we left there even though no one told us that it was heading in our direction. Apparently Hue and Hoi An which we had visited a few days earlier were under 4 feet of water after the typhoon hit so it was a good job we left when we did! Back in Vietnam we headed north, first stop was the city of Ninh Binh. Whilst in Ninh Binh, we rented [View Full Entry]

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